


Merry Christmas, Tim Riggins

by sowell



Category: Friday Night Lights
Genre: Christmas fic, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-26
Updated: 2013-05-26
Packaged: 2017-12-13 00:15:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,430
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/817713
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sowell/pseuds/sowell
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's Christmas time and the town of Dillon takes care of Tim Riggins.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Merry Christmas, Tim Riggins

**Author's Note:**

> Written for neversince for the 2007 fnl_santa challenge on livejournal.

The worst thing about being homeless is the uncomfortable sleeping arrangements. Tim punches the deflated pillow and rolls over, trying to burrow back into sleep. He's almost found his way back to the king-sized bed and the nice comfy blonde with Tyra's rack and Lyla's ass when a grinding noise makes him jump. The garage door slides up like a broken shade, and Coach is standing there in the blinding morning light.

"Riggins. Up," he orders. "Practice in thirty minutes."

Tim grunts.

" _Riggins_. Time to get up, son."

"Yes, sir," Tim mumbles into his pillow. He can feel Coach glaring at him, not moving, so he finally raises his head a fraction. "I'm up."

"All right," Coach says. "If you want breakfast better get your butt to the kitchen before it's gone."

Tim doesn't want breakfast. Tim's made it to practice without breakfast for four years, and he really feels no need to change now. But it's Coach's house and Coach's kitchen, so Tim drags himself to a sitting position and pushes his hair out of his face.

"Be right there."

*

Mrs. Taylor is all sunshine and smiles as she dishes eggs onto his plate, chattering away about the weather and his classes and chirping occasional instructions in her daughter's direction. Tim hasn't known very many women like Mrs. Taylor, but he can read that smile all the same. It's the smile of  _I'll be nice to you and I'll cook for you and I'll let you sleep in my house, but if you touch my daughter I'll kill you and make it look like an accident_. Julie, for her part, just alternates between staring at him in open disdain and glaring at her mother, and Baby Taylor does nothing but cry.

Tim eats his eggs and tries to keep his head down until Coach pops a head in the front door and calls him.

It's surreal, driving to practice in the coach's car. Tim usually barely makes it to morning practice at all, let alone arrives early. Halfway to the field, Coach breaks the silence.

"You heard from that roommate of yours?"

Tim shakes his head, then realizes Coach is driving and can't see him. "No."

At first Coach doesn't answer, and Tim thinks that's the end of the conversation, but he speaks again. "I don't know exactly what's going on, but if you're in trouble, you'd better come out with it now. You're on thin ice as it is.”

Tim's tongue-tied for a second. He can't tell him about the meth lab; Coach would call the cops and then who knows what Guy and his nutjob friends would do. He can't tell him about the gun; if Coach knew what kind of people Tim had gotten tangled up with, he'd kick him off the team again in a second.

Coach takes his eyes off the road for a second to glance in his direction, and Tim realizes he has to answer.

“Everything’s fine,” he says. “Sir,” he adds a second later.

Coach looks like he believes that just about as much as he believes Santa Claus is coming to Dillon this Christmas, but Tim doesn’t know what to say to convince him. So he says nothing.

“All right,” Coach responds after a minute. “All right.”

*

If the rest of the team is confused about why Tim Riggins is suddenly getting rides to practice with the coach, then they know better than to say anything about it. And if anyone looks at him the wrong way, Tim puts them down on the field, hard, and that’s the end of that.

It’s the last week of school before Christmas vacation, and the teachers don’t want to be there any more than the students. Tim sits in the back and catches up on sleep, since he knows he won’t get much rest on that damn couch. The teacher drones on and on, and Tim puts his head down and dreams.

He’s ten years old again, and he and Jay are running around in the snow, leveling snowballs at each other with all their fourth-grade might. Tim’s cold and wet and out-of-breath, but it doesn’t matter, because he’s having fun. Not fun like alcohol and not fun like girls, but really fun, like football used to be fun.

He’s winning the fight, getting in two snowballs to every one of Jay’s, and he can see his house, cheery and snowcapped in the background. His father is there suddenly, and he grabs him and Jay by the ankles and tips both of them playfully into the snow. This is a dream; he knows it’s a dream. It doesn’t snow in Dillon, and even if it did, his father never would have taken the time to play in it. Plus, even back then, Jay had the better throwing arm – Tim never would have beat him in a snowball fight. But it doesn’t matter. Tim’s got nothing better to do than let the dream sink in and take over….

“Tim!” His math teacher snaps fingers directly in front of his face, and Tim jerks his head up.

“Period’s over, Riggins,” Mr. Sorensen says, and Tim realizes students are filing past on either side of him, shooting him curious looks. He sleepily starts to follow, when Sorensen stops him.

“I know life is a never-ending party to you football players,” he sneers, “but if you want to pass my class I’d advise staying awake.”

Tim dwarfs him by half a foot, and for a second he imagines punching him right in his puffed-up little face. His fist clenches involuntarily, but he fights it back. All he does is sling his bag over his shoulder, staring Sorensen down all the way.

“Merry Christmas,” he says, and takes his time ambling out of the room.

*

He’s halfway through  _Deal or No Deal_  on Coach’s shitty little spare TV when he hears the door connecting the kitchen and the garage creak open. Lyla Garrity’s head creeps around the corner, shiny dark hair spilling over her shoulder.

“Hey,” she greets him softly, tipping her head to the side in that way that means he’s about to get a Garrity Pity Speech Special. “Your brother told me I could find you here.”

“I didn’t tell him to tell you,” Tim says, taking a swill of his water bottle and wishing it was beer. He’s feeling surly and he can’t figure out why. Maybe he just hates being here, Coach’s charity case, and maybe he hates that Lyla is seeing it in living color.

Lyla’s undaunted, as always. She comes over to the couch and gently seats herself next to him. The ancient cushion dips under her slight weight, and he can smell the lilac of her perfume and the winter air from outside.

“Do you want to tell me what happened?” she asks with big brown eyes.

 _No_ , Tim wants to say, but the look on her face is already making him feel about four years old. No need to give her more reason for a lecture.

“I needed a place to crash,” he shrugs. “I crashed here. It’s not a big deal.”

“Tim,” she says. She touches his hand, and feels it. Like, really feels it, all through his body. “Come on,” she continues. “You’re living in a garage.”

“So?”

“So, why didn’t you tell me you had no where to stay? You could have at least told Jason.”

He stands up suddenly. “I don’t know, Lyla,” he says, frustrated. “Maybe I didn’t want the whole town knowing my business.”

“You think I’d just go around telling everyone I see?” she asks, hurt. Her mouth purses into a sweet little frown, and sometimes she’s so pretty he can hardly stand it.

“I know you, Garrity,” he says, slightly softer. “I’ve seen that kid living with your dad. I don’t need you trying to save me.”

“Right. That’s why you’re camping out in a freezing cold garage a week before Christmas,” she says tartly.

He leans his back up against the wall and smirks slowly. “I’m fine, Lyla. Unless you’re offering to share your room with me?”

She shoots him a withering look that answers him more eloquently than words. “Fine,” she says, relenting primly. “I just came to see how you were.” She slides a Hallmark envelope from her purse and hands it to him. “Merry Christmas.”

She’s halfway out the door before he can make himself say her name. She turns expectantly, and he smiles again, a real one this time. “Thanks.”

She smiles in return, soft and dazzling in the dim garage, and then she’s gone.

*

Tim makes it right up until Friday before everything goes to hell. They’re almost done with practice – last practice for a whole week – and even Coach is in a good mood. Or, at least, he’s not verbally skinning them all.

Josh Miller sidles up beside Tim and nods toward the school building. Tim looks and sees Lyla’s lone figure, walking across the parking lot with her ponytail bouncing.

“Check out the prom queen turned Jesus freak,” Miller laughs. “Total shame to waste that ass on church.” He claps Tim on the back like they’re friends, and Tim looks at him out of the corner of his eye. “What do you think, Riggins? Think you can get her excommunicated?”

Tim punches him square across the jaw, hard enough that they both go down. Miller hits the ground, and Tim keeps punching, pummeling him on the face, the neck, the stomach, anywhere he thinks might hurt. He likes it. He’s been  _waiting_  for it, felt it spooling up inside him for weeks. He makes a fist and hits, and almost smiles when the skin breaks against his knuckles.

*

It’s not until he’s back at the Taylor house, slouched on his bed/sofa with a bag of ice against his split lip, that he begins to regret it.

“What the hell is wrong with you?” Coach yells in his face. He’s spitting mad, still in his windbreaker and hat, and Tim almost cringes at the fury in his voice. He doesn’t think Coach is actually looking for an answer, so he stares down at the concrete floor instead.

And Coach isn’t done. “I let you back on the team,” he seethes. “I invite you into my house. I  _promise_  my wife – who I love very dearly and who I am dearly afraid of - that you won’t cause any trouble while you’re here. Do you know how this looks for me? That the player staying with me is the one starting fights in the middle of practice? Are you  _trying_ to get the school board on my ass?”

“No sir,” Tim mutters. “Sorry.”

“Sorry?  _Sorry_?” He puts his hands on his hips. “Well I’ll tell you what, Riggins. You’re not sorry. Sorry is what you’re going to be tomorrow, when I figure out what to do with you.”

“Coach, he – ”

“I don’t care,” Coach barks. “I don’t care if he insulted your playing, your manhood, your pride, or your mother. I don’t want to hear it.”

Tim looks him in the eye for the first time, bracing himself against the gleaming anger he sees there. “Am I off the team?” he asks, defeated.

Coach clenches his jaw for a second. Then, in a clipped voice, he says, “I don’t know.”

Tim swallows and nods, and Coach just stares him down icily. Tim stands up, drags his duffel bag out from under the sofa, and begins to shove clothes into it.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

Tim looks at him in surprise. Coach is still glaring at him, so he begins cautiously, “Packing. I figured – ”

“You’re not kicked out,” Coach says sharply. “I want you here, where I can watch you.” He tosses a bright pink cell phone directly at Tim’s chest. It bounces off into his hands, and Tim looks at it in disbelief.

“For the next two weeks, you call me  _wherever_  you go,” Coach tells him. “I want to know where you are, who you’re talking to, and when you’re going to be back. I want to know what you’re doing at all times. If I don’t know, I’m going to call you, and let me tell you – ” he puts his face right next to Tim’s, and lowers his voice to an angry murmur, “you _better_  pick up that phone, son.”

He steps back and points his finger right at Tim. “You manage that,” he says, “and we’ll see about the team.”

He turns his back and starts to walk out, and, almost involuntarily, Tim says, “It’s pink.”

“It’s Julie’s,” Coach says, “and she’s none too happy about it, either. If you lose it you’ll have to answer to me  _and_  her, and trust me, between the two of us, I’d take me any day.”

Tim feels like a noose is tightening around him. “What if someone calls for her? What should I tell them?”

“What do you think?” Coach asks scathingly, and Tim realizes he’s still very, very pissed, despite the diminished volume of his voice. “You tell them you’re an idiot, that you started a fight on my field, and that they can reach Julie somewhere else.” Coach pauses for a second. “Unless it’s Matt Saracen or a Swede, in which case you can just tell them she’s changed her number.”

Tim knows he should shut his mouth now, but he can’t help but pipe up one last time. “Am I  _grounded_?”

“Damn straight,” Coach says, and slams the door.

*

Tim sleeps for the next two days. Street comes to see him, and he hears Coach send him right back out the door. He hides in the garage right up until he hears the Taylor family leave for Christmas Eve church service. Then he can’t take it anymore. He’s suffocating.  _Home_ , he thinks briefly. Just home for a second, and then he’ll be all right again.

His truck coughs in the unusually cold air, but it starts up after a few tries. The streets of Dillon are silent and deserted on Christmas Eve, but Tim can see the warm glow emanating from house after house. Dillon is a tiny town, and even the more run-down neighborhoods have lights in the windows and plastic nativity scenes on their frozen lawns. He passes Tyra’s house, and the driveway is packed with cars. He wonders if it’s her mother’s drunk friends, her sister’s stripper friends, or her new boyfriend Landry’s dorky friends. Tyra always accused him of not noticing anything, but those two have been hard to miss over the last couple of months, walking around, joined at the hip like the most mismatched prom couple in the history of high school.

He parks his car on the street, a few hundred feet down from his brother’s driveway. The air is bitingly cold, but it feels good after days of the stuffy garage. The yard is dark, but the house is lit up. Billy has even gone so far as to string some Christmas lights over the front door. Tim has a clear view into the kitchen, and the site hits him with the force of shovel to the gut: Billy, Jackie, and Bo, all sitting on stools around the counter, eating dinner.

He’s frozen for a second. Jackie’s wearing a candy-cane-red sweater and loose, glossy hair, and Bo is almost falling off the stool, he’s gesturing so hard with his skinny little arms. And Billy…Billy is relaxed and laughing and he looks like a father. Like the happy head of some alternate-universe Riggins family.

He feels the old familiar rage rise up in him, and he wants to go in there and tear the house to shreds. He wants to walk right in and clap Billy on the back and see just how uncomfortable he can make their cozy little Christmas dinner. He wants to ask them both how the fuck they could do this, how they could still be doing this when he’s still here, and still alive.

But he wouldn’t do that to Jackie, and he definitely wouldn’t do it to Bo. He turns and slinks away instead.

He opts for walking instead of driving. It shouldn’t be this cold in Texas, but right now he likes it: he can see his breath coming out in puffs, and his hands are going numb inside his jean pockets. He thinks about heading back toward the Taylor house, then changes his mind. He can still hear Coach’s furious voice echoing in his brain, and he doesn’t really feel like spending Christmas hearing that he’s off the team, again.

He does the stupidest thing he can think of; he goes to Lyla Garrity’s house. The house is big and beautiful and all the bushes have twinkling Christmas lights strung around them. He can picture the whole family sitting around a formal table, completely different from Billy’s countertop Christmas scene, but no less exclusive. He doesn’t belong in either of those places, and he doesn’t know why he’s here.

“Tim?”

He turns to see Lyla stepping lightly down the brick-layered front steps, bundled up in a parka and boots. “I thought that was you,” she says. “What are you doing here?”

He’s all tongue-tied. He’s not drunk, but he feels that way, lost and dizzy in the middle of this town that he’s lived in his whole life. She looks adorable with her brow furrowed and her hands covered in mittens, and he wants to kiss her.

He steps back, instead. “Sorry,” he says. “I was just – ”

He can’t say it, but she seems to hear it anyway. Her face softens, and for some reason he doesn’t mind the sympathy tonight. “It’s okay,” she says gently. She crosses her arms. “I was hoping I’d see you at church.”

He looks down. “Yeah, I don’t think that’s really for me after all.”

“Not yet,” she says. The corner of her mouth ticks up in a half-smile. “Believe it or not, I worry about you.”

“Christian charity?” he asks.

“Maybe,” she says. “Partly.” She takes his hand and touches his cheek with wool-covered fingers, and the not-drunk feeling is mounting, making him more panicky and confused with every second.

He wants to talk, and he can’t figure out what to say. “Lyla, I – ”

“Forget it,” she says. “Do you want to come inside?”

He peers again at the curtained windows. “Your family – ”

“It’s Christmas,” she cuts him off again. “And we’re Christians. I doubt my mom can argue with that. Come on.”

She starts to pull him toward the house, and that’s when Julie Taylor’s pink cell phone starts to ring.

Lyla raises an eyebrow when he pulls it from his pocket. The digital display reads, “Dad.” He turns his back on Lyla and answers it.

“Hey Coach.”

“Riggins,” Coach says levelly. “What did I tell you?”

“I’m in front of the Garrity’s house, talking to Lyla,” he says quickly. “I swear to God.”

“Because it’s Christmas, I’m choosing to believe you,” he says, sounding slightly mollified. “Now get your butt back here.”

The thought of going back into the main Taylor house, with Mrs. Taylor and Daughter Taylor and Baby Taylor staring at his bruised face all through dinner has the panic rising again.

“But – are you sure?” he asks.

“Yes,” Coach says gruffly. “And my wife’s already set a place for you and chewed me out for losing track of you on Christmas Eve, so come on back here.”

Lyla’s still got that eyebrow raised when he turns around and meets her eyes. “I have to go back to Coach’s house,” Tim says. “I’m sort of…grounded.”

She laughs. “I don’t believe it. Grounded?”

“Pretty much,” he says.

“Okay,” she says, smiling slightly.

“Okay.”

“Then I guess…” she shakes her head a little. “Merry Christmas?” She says it like a question, and even that’s cute.

“You, too, Garrity,” he says. “Be good. Stay Christian.”

She goes up on her toes suddenly and kisses him lightly on the cheek, satiny and cold and perfect. And right then, the snow starts to fall.

They both look up in wonder. Tim thinks he’s smiling, and Lyla’s eyes are shining. There’s snow drifting onto her dark hair, glistening and melting, and this is suddenly the most perfect moment in his whole life.

He wants to kiss her for real, but for once he does the smart thing. “See you in school,” he says, stepping back.

“Yeah.” She smiles at him, pink and secretive. “See you around.”


End file.
